Wolff camp calls Adkisson hypocritical

In 2004, County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson, a Democrat, gave $250 to Kevin Wolff, who was running for City Council at the time and is now a Republican county commissioner. Kevin's father, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, had requested this contribution from Adkisson, his colleague on Commissioners Court.

If this bit of trivia seems trifling, try telling that to Adkisson and Nelson Wolff, who are now battling for the Democratic nomination for county judge: The ancient, paltry sum is suddenly an issue in the race.

That's ironic, at least.

This week, Adkisson called Nelson Wolff “a pope on a date” for giving money to a handful of Republicans over the years. As for the commissioner, he has “never, not once” contributed to a Republican, he said.

Voters, he added, should expect total fealty to party in a county judge.

“The quarterback on the team cannot be caught in the other team's huddle,” Adkisson said.

The county judge brushed off the attack, citing bipartisanship as critical for governing the county.

Yet Nelson Wolff's campaign is now flagging Adkisson's contribution to Nelson Wolff's son as evidence that Adkisson is less loyal to the Democratic Party than he claims.

Got that?

Stop right there, said Christian Anderson, campaign manager for Adkisson.

At the time, Adkisson arguably was showing loyalty to a fellow Democrat by honoring the county judge's request to contribute to his son.

“It was at the request of (Kevin's) father,” Anderson said. “He asked all the commissioners to contribute to Kevin.”

Also, a seat on City Council is a nonpartisan position.

Kevin Wolff conceded that, but he said Adkisson should've known his party affiliation, particularly because he was running in District 9.

“It wasn't a secret,” Kevin Wolff said. “It wasn't a lead piece of my campaign, but that's what the constituency is out there.”

And then there's Terri Hall.

A grass-roots activist from Comal County, Hall is a diehard foe of toll roads who somehow held great sway over Adkisson while he was chairman of the San Antonio-Bexar County Metropolitan Planning Organization.

Exactly how much sway remains unclear.

Adkisson has stubbornly refused to release any messages from his private email account between him and Hall about public business, despite rulings from the Texas attorney general and a state district judge to do so.

That alone is campaign fodder. But this column is about Democrats commingling with Republicans, and Christian Archer, campaign manager for Nelson Wolff, sees another layer of hypocrisy in Adkisson's ties to Hall.

“Adkisson has ignored ... rulings in order to keep his secret relationship with Republican tea party activist Terri Hall a secret from the voters,” Archer said.

Opposition to toll roads doesn't make someone a tea party activist.

Paranoia about Agenda 21, however, does link someone to that set, and Hall is paranoid about Agenda 21, a nonbinding resolution passed two decades ago by the United Nations to encourage countries to conserve energy and restrict urban sprawl.

Hall has written, though, that the resolution is really a conspiracy to “abolish private property, reduce the carbon footprint of humans, restrict mobility, and basically control what we eat, how many children we can have, how we travel, and where we can live, work and play.”

Was Adkisson fretting with Hall about Agenda 21 in those emails?

The best way for Adkisson to reassure primary voters is to release the emails.

Meanwhile, the fact that we're fretting about a $250 contribution in 2004 is proof that, while fealty to party might not matter when running a county, running a campaign is a different story.

Anderson: “I suspect (Nelson Wolff) found out, in Democratic primaries it does matter.”